DelightfuLee : the life and music of Lee Morgan / by Jeffery S. McMillan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McMillan, Jeffery S.

Series:

Jazz perspectives (Ann Arbor, Mich.)

Jazz perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Morgan, Lee, 1938-1972.

Morgan, Lee.

Trumpet players--United States--Biography.

Trumpet players.

Jazz musicians--United States--Biography.

Jazz musicians.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

ix, 250 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, music ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2008]

Summary:

One of the most individual stylists of his time, jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan began his professional career in Philadelphia at age fifteen. At eighteen, after a short stint with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Morgan joined Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra, where he stayed until the group disbanded in 1958. A return to Blakey brought Morgan new opportunities, including his first successful attempts at composition. But however much his time with Blakey helped to advance his playing and writing, his boss's and his bandmates' destructive drug habits exerted just as strong an influence. Within three years, Morgan would be back home in Philadelphia, strung out on heroin and penniless.

Morgan's return to music in the early to mid-sixties witnessed a tremendous evolution in his playing. Formerly a virtuoso in the model of his idol, Clifford Brown, Morgan brought to his critically acclaimed Blue Note records of the era an emotionally charged, muscular tone, full of poise and control. But it was with the record Sidewinder, recorded in 1963, that Morgan found his greatest fame and commercial success, due to the infectious groove of the title tune. By the time of his death, at thirty-three-murdered in a New York City club by his girlfriend, Helen More, during a gig-Morgan had begun a new phase of his career, experimenting with freer forms of musical expression.

Jeffery S. McMillan's Delightfulee is the first biography to seriously examine Morgan's vast contributions to jazz, both as a performer and as a composer. Thanks to exclusive access to Lee Morgan's now-deceased brother, McMillan is also able to provide unparalleled insight into Morgan's personal and family life.

Contents:

Beginnings

The student

Breaking into the big time

Many nights in Tunisia : on tour with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra

Gigging and recording

Freelancing and becoming a Jazz Messenger

Life as a Messenger

The summit

Collapse

Comeback and The sidewinder

Blue Note classics

Studio man

Left Bank Jazz Society and another comeback

Working man

New beginning

Slugs'.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-238) and index.

ISBN:

9780472115020

0472115022

9780472032815

047203281X

OCLC:

180577030

Online:

Publisher description